[MD] Thus spoke Lila

[rapsncows at fastmail.fm]

Ham,
my frustration is mounting again,
so sorry if I come out too snippy,
Tim


> [Ham] I'm willing to meet even antagonists half way, but giving up Essence 
> destroys the entire thesis.  Without the "fundament", as you call it,
> there is nothing -- not even you and I arguing.

[Tim]
my point did not come across, not even one bit it seems.  What I was
asking was for you to place yourself in my shoes, see things as I was
seeing them, because you are the expert here, to be able to absorb my
language and terminology, etc. and etc.  In reality this may be too much
to ask for fundamental, not just personal reasons.  But, I think the
difficulty we had the first go through, and what I am pointing to now,
is that you are not getting into my model of 'essence' at all.  I wasn't
asking you to give up 'essence' in what was above (but is deleted now),
as is evidenced from the last sentence.  I was asking you to be able to
reformulate your whole thesis with my preferred language - based on
impossibility and possibility --- if possible, or at least to the extent
possible.

along those lines you did make one big concession before, to call
essence, absolute possibility.  So:

> 
> [Ham, previously]:
> > I regard metaphysics as an attempt to theorize reality as an
> > all-encompassing system.  Anything less is for me an incomplete
> > thesis.  Certainly the source of creation is fundamental to Essentialism.
> 
> [Tim]:
> > then why have you replaced it?  (I hope this comes off in a nice way,
> > just mildly provocative.  I am trying to *spur* you to see essentialism
> > as I see it: either you will help me see it right, or I will help you
> > see it right; or, more likely, we will both see that we were not quite
> > right.)
> 
>[Ham] What have I "replaced"?

[Tim]
I was jesting that you were replacing 'the source of creation' with
'essence'.  (hopefully to get you to see from my perspective: your
'essence' doesn't seem necessary to me, but your 'nothing' seems very
close to my fundament!)

> 
> [Ham]:
> To ignore [the source] as a matter of "personal preference" is tantamount
> to 
> a physicist saying "I'm going to ignore the law of the conservation of 
> energy because I cannot happily submit to it."
> 
> [Tim]:
> > But this is not fair from my perspective.  From my perspective it is not
> > I, but you who is ignoring it as a matter of personal preference. ...
> 
> [Ham] Ignoring what, Tim?

[Tim]
again, 'the source'!  You seem to be calling it 'nothing'.  Or, if not
it, a big part of it.  If 'essence' is absolute potential...  how can
your 'nothing' have no potential and no actuality?  If 'essence' is
absolute potential, and there is no other, how can there be no potential
to your 'nothing'.  In fact, how can the potential of your 'nothing' be
less than the potential of your 'essence', especially given that you
consider 'nothing' to be on some kind of par with 'essence':

from your thesis: “As the antithetical essent, only nothingness shares
the absolute and undivided
status of Essence.”

$$$

> 
> > [Tim previously] If I continue with your example of the conservation of energy,
> > I see your 'essence' as a term which always sums to zero by itself,
> > such that there is no need for me ever to carry it in to the energy
> > balance.  So why burden myself with it?  I'll wait for this, just
> > want to help you see where I'm coming from now.
> >
> > IF the proprietary self is a negate of essence, which is merely
> > sensible of value, what good is that?
> > How can one negate differ from another negate?  How can a
> > timeless and eternally uniform essence create different negates
> > merely by negating its timeless and eternally uniform self ---
> > producing different nothingness-es?!
> 
> [Ham] What good is a negate that is sensible of value?  Think about what you
> are asking, Tim; for only an agent negated from the Source can realize the
> value of the Source from which it is estranged.  That's precisely where
> morality comes from.

[Tim]
so, the focus was on 'merely'; I should have highlighted that, sorry. 
What I was suggesting is that sensibility, while necessary, does not
seem sufficient to permit for willful behavior.  Sensibility of value is
necessary, but if I were limited to sensibility, how could I *do*?

I will leave off discussion about the physics of negation still.  but
see how I continued:

> 
> > [ Tim previously] and again, how does mere sensibility of value permit a nothingness
> > to will anything?  If we start as nothingness... and if every other
> > proprietary I starts as nothingness...  and we have no direct access to
> > essence...  from whence comes the *power* to will?
> 
>[Ham] The power of will is to desire, and it comes from value-sensibility.  We 
> want the value of life, so we choose to do all we can to survive.

[Tim]
If my only tool is to sense value I do not see how I can *do* anything
but sense?

> [Ham] We aspire to be, possess. or identify with what we sense is desirable, which is why
> we work to achieve it.  In following our desires, individually and 
> collectively, we change the course of history.  Is that not enough
> "power" for you?

[Tim]
I just don't see how such power can arise solely from sensibility.

$$$

> 
> [Ham] Again, Quality (with or without the initial cap) does not exist until it
> is realized.

[Tim]
BOOM!!!!!!!  How then could there be any 'the source'???  Whether we
call it Quality, or essence, or something-is, or fundament, or absolute,
etc.

> [Ham]  It doesn't float around the universe independently, waiting
> for us to capture it.  I don't see why this poses a problem of understanding. 


[Tim]
again, how do we *do* something?  Your 'essentialism' seems to gloss
over this.  If I can't *do* anything until until some other
*intelligent* agent *realizes* what I've done...  I really don't get it.
 And this gets to my perspective on your treatment of the rose in your
thesis.  As I recall, you destroyed it - though I should really look
back at your handling before I spout off here.  Anyway, for your info,
that is where I put down your thesis and - had I not known you here -
might well have left it for good.

> [Ham] Your sense of Quality (Value) is what connects you to the essential
> Source. Without it you would have no awareness.

[Tim]
awareness is one thing.  Being able to *do* is another.

> [Ham] Whether you yourself are (have?) Quality is someone else's judgment call.  And the fact that we are
> estranged from the Source is what affords us the freedom to choose our actions.

[Tim]
I might say, "bad faith, Ham."  Wouldn't my estrangement from the Source
be sufficient?  Mustn't the Source realize my Quality?  This especially
so if you bookkeeping is to work, regarding oneness and immutability of
the Source?

$$$

> 
> [Tim]:
> > Remember that within the MoQ even the inorganic can realize quality.  It
> > doesn't take a genius.
> 
> [Ham] I prefer not to remember that.  It doesn't make sense to a non-moqist.

[Tim]
I think that it makes sense to most everyone who is in the habit of
*doing* (and especially people who *do* most of their *doing* by
themselves). 

$$$

> 
> > [Tim previously] Again, my perspective is that Value, and your physics of negation,
> > your ontology, might all be valid even if 'essence' is to go away!
> > Like I said before, it seems that 'essence' is hovering over all this,
> > non-essentially as it were, and that there can be other formulations
> > that reproduce value, and your physics of negation, a proprietary I,
> > etc.  And I think you are missing this perspective because you are
> > holding on to a wordplay, that nothingness is really nothingness.
> 
> [Ham] Look, Tim -- call it God, Oneness, Absolute, Creator, or Quality if you 
> wish.  There's nothing sacred about the word "Essence".  But you can't
> get 
> something from nothing (unless, as someone recently said, you're the 
> government).  Ex nihilo nihil fit [nothing comes from nothingness] is the 
> basic principle of metaphysics.  You'll be gone long  before it is.

[Tim]
My point is that you can't get nothing!  The abyss does not go down that
far!  It never did!  It could not have!

But!  If it could have, then 'nothing' would really have been something
(as in your treatment of Cusa from your thesis: "Cusa reasoned that if
actuality did not exist, then nothing could actually be.")  It seems
foolish to try to describe 'nothing', but, I'm being foolish.  Nothing
would be the impossibility of something.  But that would be something. 
So that wouldn't be right.  But already we have an idea; Which is
something too.  And we have this idea of impossibility and possibility.

So, if "nothing comes from nothingness" is the basic principle of
metaphysics, and if I'll be gone long before it is, let me be gone, so
that we can finally get rid of it too.  Words like 'nothing' and
'nothingness' are not words, there is no concept under them, they are
hollow and licentious:

Something is.

$$$


> [Ham] What does "a real nothingness" mean to you?

[Tim]
it doesn't!  I only use it to meet you.  And I have said many many times
that this is the case - or at least I think I have given sufficient
caution.

> [Ham]  In an existential sense, 
> nothingness is the absence of "thingness", empty space or a void in the 
> objective world.

[Tim]
'empty space' is a thing.  'a void' is a thing.

> [Ham]  In a metaphysical sense, nothingness is a synthetic 
> "other" that is estranged from Absolute Essence which can have no 
> "otherness" beside it.

[Tim]
you mean: "... which can have no *non-synthetic* 'otherness' beside it".
 Right?  Looking back, I should have seen this more clearly.  There is
no rose, right?

so your 'essentialism'... can I view it as a dichotomous metaphysics
based on non-synthetic/synthetic?  This rather than essence and
nothingness?  These two are exactly equivalent, right?

> [Ham]  So, in neither case is nothingness "real".

[Tim]
where 'real' is a synonym for 'non-synthetic', right? 

> [Ham] But as a "negate" of Essence we participate in a world of appearances, unaware
> that it's all an illusion.

[Tim]
one: but now I don't see how we get a negate.  why should the negate
ever be reunited with essence?

two: AND!  I don't submit to participation in an illusion!  There is a
reality.  And this reality has a real appearance.  There is, however, a
distortion between the two.  (this 'distortion' seems to me to be
necessary; and it also seems fair, moral.)

three: I still see no method for you to generate willful participation
here.

> [Ham]  Only Value is real, because it's essential.

$$$

> 
> > [Tim previously] Pirsig never equated his Quality to your Value.  (Did he?)
> 
> [Ham] Yes.  I don't have the exact reference (it may be in his SODV
> presentation) he posited the equation Quality = Value.  Perhaps Horse or one of the 
> charter members will provide that source for us.

[Tim]
I think I have seen this source too, I think it was SODV, but he was
talking about his Value, not yours, right?

> 
> > [Tim previously] and even though he did equate quality and value (he moreso
> > equated quality and morality), Quality was the source of quality.
> 
> [Ham] One would hope that he accepted Quality as quality itself, not its
> source.

[Tim]
Ham.  You have agreed to call essence absolute potential, for my sake. 
Now, if I say that this POTENTIAL (with caps) is the source of the
potential (no caps) that I have to sit and type to you now...

$$$

> 
> [Ham] The two sides of the coin are "negation" and "affirmation".  By negating 
> "otherness" we affirm the finite value of being.  The principle as I have 
> postulated it is:
> We affirm the Value of Essence (incrementally) by negating the otherness
> of its being.

[Tim]
can I substitute thusly: we affirm the non-synthetic aspect of SOMETHING
(incrementally) by ... ?

> 
> > [Tim previously] If you can come to my side for a second... something is.  Don't worry
> > about impugning its absoluteness.  nothingness is impossible.
> > Something that delineates and separates existents should get a proper
> > name: essential delineator maybe.
> >
> > now, within the MoQ, I have suggested thinking of Quality as delineator:
> >
> > so, to help, I have suggested the substitution of 'Quality' for
> > 'nothingness':
> 
> [Ham] This doesn't help me, and I doubt that it helps Pirsig.  As I said
> before, all of existence is differentiated by nothingness.

[Tim]
whereby 'nothingness' I can substitute 'synthetic other-ness', right?

> [Ham]  Being itself is defined by nothingness -- our nothingness.

[Tim]
and again: being itself is defined by synthetic otherness -- our
synthetic otherness.

But, I must caution, I don't buy it.  How do we *do*?  If you answer
nothing else in this email, Ham, please answer this!  Okay?  I don't see
how an *entirely* synthetic otherness can *do*.

> [Ham]  Even if Value has a polar function 
> ("positive and negative", for example), it may account for our 
> discrimination in desiring or choosing one thing over another, but it 
> doesn't "delineate" objects.

[Tim]
I never mentioned 'Value' regarding 'delineation'!!  Valuable aspects
are what are being delineated!  And, on top of that, the
process/processor of delineation is valuable (as I use the word) itself.
 I know that the process/processor of delineation is not-valuable as you
use the word, so, I must say... what?  synthetically essential. maybe? 
We then get a continuous intertwining of the 'really essential' and the
'synthetically essential', and I don't think you can come to a *do*
unless your proprietary I has, and functions with, both.  BUt, I do
recognize that *your* 'essence' is mutilated by this.

$$$


> [Ham] In addition to the above logic, Value is an essential property, which
> means it cannot be divided, even though we sense it differentially.  We can 
> penetrate the experienced world with our nothingness and thereby divide
> it; but we can't project Value that we don't have at the illusion that we 
> create.

[Tim]
this is exactly what I'm getting at: if you can't 'project', how can you
*do*?  (and again, reality is no 'illusion'.  It is merely distorted
sufficiently due to the mandates of actually preserving it as reality. 
Again, just like your treatment of freedom from your thesis: one must be
cut off to be free.  Similarly, reality must be distorted in order for
the essents to get any image of it - but it is merely a fair distortion
--- so it seems to me; I haven't yet got the physics to back me.

> 
> [Ham] I'm sorry, Tim, but your word substitutions and analogies are not just 
> symbols, they define a concept that is a perversion of what I have
> theorized and believe in.

[Tim]
now dangit Ham, every word is itself word substitutions.  That is what
definitions are.  And, if you believe in nothingness...  Anyway,
hopefully this round of word substitutions is better, if not adequate!

> [Ham]  If you are trying to accommodate Essentialism to the MoQ
> by making Quality (Value) a "delineator", it won't work for me.  Let the 
> Pirsigians tell you if it works for them.

[Tim]
dangit again.  I never mentioned 'Value' as delineator; it is you who
keeps *substituting* 'Value' for 'Quality'!  It was your 'nothingness'
for which I used 'delineator' as substitute.  Recall how much you
disliked that I equated Quality and nothingness!  I never mentioned
Value.  I haven't even really gotten there because I am still stuck at
the fundament.  And the proprietary I, of course.

> 
> [Ham] Meanwhile, if you need additional "proof" for Essence as a necessary
> Source, I'll try to oblige you with a logical argument.

[Tim]
I need proof of YOUR essence.  Your essence is burdened with your
descriptors, which I have referenced previously.  I think that YOUR
essence is flawed, or unnecessary, or ...  We have agreed that teh word
is not important, so I can accept without proof the necessity of
essence, but it is YOUR treatment of it for which I need proof.

all the best,
Tim
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